Background

The National Leprosy/TB Control Programme under the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoH&SW) is responsible for the overall coordination, planning, implementation and monitoring of the TB programme in the Gambia. The programme operates within the existing primary health care (PHC) system in which there are regional health management teams, regional TB control officers, leprosy/TB inspectors, community health workers and village health workers.

Goal

To reduce TB prevalence by at least 2% a year from the current rate of 128/100,000 population to 103/100,000 population by 2017

Strategic Objectives:

1. To detect at least 95% of all TB Patients (universal access) in 2 weeks of onset of symptoms by 2017.
2. To achieve and sustain a treatment success rate of at least 95%, from a baseline of 88% in 2013, for all new patients by 2017.
3. To reduce the TB care and control funding gap from the current 50% to below 10% and increase domestic funding from the current 12% to at least 50% of the available budget by 2017.

National TB Control Program is a unit under the Directorate of Health Services